Take for example the amazing battle engine: while turn-based at its core, each character's basic attack is instead a series of kicks and punches that YOU enter (at the beginning of each round). Specific sequences of kicks and punches unlock "Arts" - combos that you can perform at any point in the game. Furthermore, you can chain Arts in combat if they share their first and last moves, and, what's best, you can perform any Art at any given time, giving you total freedom in combat. Most Arts are learned through experimentation, while a few are taught to you by a variety of casual mentors. To save you the trouble of writing the arts down, the game keeps track of the ones you learned in notes that can be called up either through the status menus or directly in combat. Magic in Legend of Legaia is all summoning. During combat you have the chance of absorbing the powers of a variety of enchanted monsters, and thereupon summoning them to cast spells. If you summon the creature frequently, it will increase in level, making the spell it produces more efficient and perhaps even add a side effect.

Seems as though Sony threw this amazing thing in and then forgot to capitalize on it. Makes me wonder why they capitalized on the far more restrictive battle engine in Legend of Dragoon.

Graphically, Legend of Legaia isn't much to look at (or listen to), with ungainly polygonal surroundings and fully polygonal characters who look like blocks on a string. Thankfully, in combat the characters are realistically proportioned and animate realistically.

What I cannot fathom are the intensely negative reviews coming from the people! How can a game of such caliber, genius, beauty and artisty be seen as "the worst FF ever...and so on"? I simply don't comprehend. Ive heard others like "I like all FF games, 'cept 8", or "It just doesn't belong in the Squaresoft catalogue....". Why? Upon critical analysis, I think it's because people fear change. It's part of human nature. If you adapt to something, why would you want it to change?

I have almost always noticed that some of the 'hardcore fans' proclaim that Square's old style is what should have been on this game - that they miss the old style. NONSENSE! Squaresoft wanted to do something different, temporarily. They wanted to exercise their minds a bit - to stray away from the typical RPG standards. Even possibilities of 'harsh criticism' wasn't going to stop them.....they were going to experiment. You see, even though we have an inner instinct to fear change, the human will to experiment and 'move on' conquers all (look at where experimentation has gotten us: our technology is advancing). There is no such thing as 'the way things (RPGs) ought to be'. There's nothing wrong with prefering things to remain the same, but at least, people should keep their right to experiment.